Phone bill tuition statements hide so many of the services available to students, maybe that’s why students don’t take advantage of campus until it is too late.
You’ve done it. You’ve successfully ignored the gym for three and a half years (or more), walked past Montpetit Hall’s Career Corner like it was a telemarketer, and treated campus workshops like distant relatives you avoid at weddings. But now, with graduation looming and your student ID’s expiration date feeling like a doomsday clock, you’ve had an epiphany: you’ve been robbed.
Or more accurately, you robbed yourself. And now it’s time for the heist of a lifetime, a frantic, sweaty sprint to extract every last penny of value from this institution before they revoke your access to Omni forever.
Welcome to the ‘Senior Year Scramble’. Students across campus are suddenly discovering that the athletic fee they’ve paid annually (nearly a thousand dollars over four years, more if you’re on the six-year plan) wasn’t just a decorative line item on their tuition statement. The Scramble manifests in many forms.
There’s the student who suddenly RSVPs to every “Luncheon with the Dean” or guest speaker event—not out of genuine interest in the administration, but because that’s $4.50 worth of tuition they’re clawing back one pepperoni slice at a time. There’s the person etching their initials into library desks (because if you’re paying for the furniture, you might as well personalize it, right?). And then there’s the truly desperate soul hoarding napkins, pens, and occasionally entire rolls of toilet paper from campus bathrooms, treating the university like an all-you-can-steal buffet.
It’s hard not to sympathize. University is expensive, brutally so. A meal on campus can somehow cost $18 for food that tastes like it was prepared by someone actively resenting your existence. That bubble tea you thought would be a treat? Nearly $20 for something that’s more ice than tea, leaving you wondering if you accidentally got scammed at a theme park instead of by your own university. When you’re that broke, that exhausted from late-night study sessions, and that disillusioned by the job market (have you seen Ottawa’s entry-level postings lately? “Five years’ experience required” for an unpaid internship?), the urge to recoup costs becomes overwhelming.
But here’s the twist: most of these resources were available the entire time. Tucked into that intimidating tuition breakdown you skimmed every September were line items for health services, academic support, club memberships, and recreational facilities. You paid for the career workshops. You funded the mental health counseling. You bankrolled the equity services. You just…never used them.
Why?
Students may cite a few reasons. Some genuinely didn’t know half these services existed until a panicked Google search in fourth year. Others convinced themselves they were “too busy,” as if attending one workshop would somehow derail their entire degree. Many simply assumed they’d have time later, after this midterm, after this semester, after they figured out what they were doing with their lives. Later became never, and never became “Oh god, I graduate in two months.”
The real tragedy isn’t the Scramble itself. It’s that it doesn’t have to be this way. Imagine if students treated university like the buffet they’re actually paying for, sampling everything early and often instead of gorging themselves on stale bread in the final hour. Imagine discovering mental health services in first year when burnout was still preventable. Imagine building connections at Career Corner before you’re hunched over your laptop at 2 a.m., desperately applying for jobs while stalking some alumni’s LinkedIn page, hoping their career path might offer a shred of guidance.
Maybe the solution isn’t just student initiative (though putting down the phone, removing the AirPods, and actually talking to the human sitting next to you might reveal that they know about a campus resource you don’t). Maybe universities need to shout about these services louder, more creatively, more persistently. Sure, the information exists on websites and portals, but so does your university’s stance on academic integrity, and we all know how often students avoid reading that until it’s too late.
The Senior Year Scramble will continue as long as tuition statements look like phone bills and campus resources feel like Easter eggs hidden throughout a video game. Until then, if you see someone sprinting toward the gym at 11:45 p.m., sweat-stained and wild-eyed, clutching a suspiciously full backpack of “borrowed” campus supplies, don’t judge them too harshly.
They’re just trying to get their money’s worth.
